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| Chinese mantis,
Tenodera sinensis, preying on a hummingbird © JeanneScott-Zumwalt |
Mantises, along
with lady beetles or ladybugs are beloved insects, considered good
pest controls worth having in the garden. Mantises, or mantids, are
charismatic because of their remarkable looks and large size. Some
value them as pets or use them in school projects. The females have
the bad reputation of devouring their mate’s heads, although this
is probably largely exaggerated and not as common in the wild as it
is with caged ones. They invented Styrofoam to build their egg cases
long before humans did, more on this below. Just as there are many
species of lady beetles, there are also many different mantises. The
good news is that while lady beetle species number in the hundreds,
there are only twenty kinds of mantises. The bad news is that four or
five of those species are not-native and may be causing problems for
the native ones.
